Kenyapithecus

• Kenya: virtues Hills, Fort Ternan, Nachola (Samburu District )

• Kenyapithecus wickeri
• Kenyapithecus africanus
• Kenyapithecus kizili

Kenyapithecus is an extinct genus of primates that occurred during the middle Miocene in East Africa. In Kenya, on the edge of the Great African grave breach discovered fossils have been recovered from strata that 15,5 and 14 million years old.

The genus Kenyapithecus was introduced in 1961 by Louis Leakey with the type species Kenyapithecus wickeri. 1967 arranged Leakey finds from slightly older strata of the new species to Kenyapithecus africanus. The approximately 14 million year-old fossils of Kenyapithecus wickeri come exclusively from an archaeological site at Fort Ternan in Western Kenya; which dated to an age of 15,5 bis 14 million years finds of Kenyapithecus africanus from the area of the virtues Hills and from Nachola in Samburu District.

The narrowness of the relationship between the two types, that is, the authority to assign them to a common genus, was discovered because of the small number of bones from the beginning controversial. As early as 1967 published Louis Leakey - after finding another skeleton fragments - a revised description ( "revised diagnosis" ) of the genus Kenyapithecus, in addition to various features of the dentition and the only slightly projecting snout was mentioned as well as an anatomical proximity to Ramapithecus. After the finding of an interpreted as a meaningful part of the skeleton in the virtues Hills fossils of Kenyapithecus africanus were removed in 1999 from the genus Kenyapithecus and jointly associated with other finds as Equatorius africanus of the newly defined genus Equatorius; this grouping was a few months later, however, criticized by pointing out they had failed to make a clear distinction of Griphopithecus.

Not generally recognized are so far separated from the Kenyapithecus wickeri fossils from a locality in Turkey, which were called Kenyapithecus kizili.

The name is derived from the locality Kenyapithecus in Kenya (English: Kenya ) and from the Greek word πίθηκος ( ancient Greek pronounced píthēkos: "Monkey ").